Generated through unjust judgements and behaviours rooted in unequal power relations, intersectional discrimination refers to inequitable treatment arising from multiple, overlapping forms of prejudice. It highlights how people whose identities place them outside the hegemony in more than one way can experience layered and mutually reinforcing forms of discrimination.

Architecture’s discriminatory forces are woven into the very structures that shape the discipline. These forces are maintained through norms that determine who and what the field chooses to value—and, just as significantly, whom it overlooks or excludes. Beneath this value system lie frameworks rooted in patriarchy, colonisation, and capitalism, which produce and reinforce social hierarchies across the field. Patriarchy privileges men and reinforces gendered norms of authority and recognition. Colonisation shapes racial hierarchies, epistemic dominance, and Eurocentric standards of taste and legitimacy. Capitalism generates class and ‘merit’-based inequities and commodifies labour, education, and prestige. Together, these systems construct hierarchies of worth that teach both the privileged and the marginalised to regard them as natural, inevitable, or neutral. In architecture, this conditioning persists in what is celebrated, preserved, deemed ‘neutral’, dismissed, excluded, or overwritten—decisions that often reflect inherited power rather than inherent merit.

Although there is persistent pressure to allow the dominant culture, those who benefit from structural inequities, to define the discipline’s standards, it is crucial to remember that alternative ways of knowing and making exist not only within Euro-American contexts but across the global field. Generations of architects have already rejected dominant-culture paradigms, recognizing that they are far from universal. With the current accessibility of information, we can be far more deliberate in stepping away from these inherited norms and orienting ourselves toward modes of thinking, practicing, and valuing that are equitable and grounded in our own individual and collective realities.

While some forms of resistance, including feminism, emerge in response to discrimination, they don’t always account for intersectional perspectives. This collection brings together texts that explore the complexities of intersectional discrimination, aiming to foster understanding among all readers—including those whose privilege may shield them from experiencing it first hand.